off the pavement / By Patrick Carr

Slow Boat

Last year my daughter Navarra, then 15, said she’d decided to sleep by herself on the beach. She’s always liked the adventure of being on a boat and boasts of plans to one day become a pirate. That night Navarra stoked the campfire well into early morning with a circle of other teens and “tweens passing around cups of what they called “grog,” which was water in a tin cup, until they broke open a six-pack of non-alcoholic beer. There were plenty of sleepy “AARGH”s among the youthful buccaneers at wake up time that morning.

Day two float features a few interesting riffles as the Sac cuts through old lava flows. Rows of two-foot standing waves pile up and the adventurous can swim them if a raft feels too sedate. The water is cold. This flow comes not only from the chilly bottom of Shasta Dam, but a fair chunk is imported from the North Coast’s Trinity River to water farms downstream. You might say we’re floating the eastmost fork of the Trinity, on its way to the state capitol.

It’s amazing what you see on rivers. The view changes at every bend and at the same place from day to day and year to year. Once we were at our second night’s camp, a cottonwood-laced beach with low lava cliffs rising behind, enjoying the after dinner flight of bank swallows. Suddenly a wooden boat dock drifted past, plucked from its upstream mooring by the high spring flow. Alexander and Mary B. leapt into the water and swam for it while Kelsey jumped into an oarboat, intercepted them and the dock, and with their help towed it in. The next day our group float featured a crew of young teens lounging in lawn chairs atop the dock, floating leisurely behind a raft.

Even on the valley side of the Sac there are dangers. One year Alexander steered his oarboat down an unexplored side channel. The flow was healthy and a canopy of cottonwoods and oaks leaned from the banks of the narrow passage. But around the first bend and barely 100 yards ahead was what no river-runner wants to see: a river-wide log jam, a strainer that would trap the boat and anybody on it. Quick reflexes and years of experience enabled Alexander to tie onto a mid-channel snag and rig ropes to evacuate the kids from the boat until, with hours of backbreaking effort, he and his crew could portage back to the main channel.

Take-out on Memorial Day afternoon brings mixed feelings. Rowing arms are tired and there’s work to get to tomorrow, as well as unpacking and repacking of boats and gear. But what will we all look like next year? How gray will the adults be, and will some of us not make it, or maybe have new kids or even grandkids to bring along? That’s what I’m waiting to find out this Memorial Day weekend.

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